Info days & Seminars

Info days will be organized to inform research community and relative SMEs on SEE-DRUG project and the employment of new technologies.

Seminars will be also organized on a periodic basis and will be given by researchers and other scientists from industries, SMEs etc. These seminars will focus on innovation capacity building and for UPAT and the transfer of technology with industry/stakeholders. Special care will be taken for the participation of Advisory Group members in order to couple innovation and applied research, which cover the needs of the industrial stakeholders.

11 Octomber 2013 Inauguration of the SEEDRUG Biomolecular NMR Facility

“SEEDRUG” Consortium members announces the Inauguration of the “SEEDRUG” Biomolecular NMR infrastructure, which will take place at October 11th, 2013 at Achaia Beach Hotel, at Rion-Kastellokampos area.
The aforesaid event constitutes a SEEDRUG dissemination activity,aiming to the inauguration of infrastructure based on state-of-the-art research equipment, which is acquired through the above mentioned REGPOT project and it is, up-to-now,unique not only in the Greek academic environment but also in the entire South-Eastern EU region.
It is our great honour that a number of pioneers in the fields involved is going to participate in this event. Among them, we are going to be joined by Professor Kurt Wuthrich (ETH, Zurich & The Scripps, LaJolla, USA), awarded with  Nobel Laureate 2002 in Chemistry for his contribution to the development of Biomolecular NMR, as well as Professor Lucia Banci, Director of Center of Magnetic Resonance at University of Florence, one of the EU Large Scale NMR Infrastructures in Life Sciences  (www.bio-nmr.net) and Structural Biology Networks (INSTRUCT) and Dr Dimitri Corpakis, Head of Unit, Regional Dimension of Innovation at European Commission.

Moderator of the event will be Ms Maria Spyraki.

The event is addressed to the the academic community and to the broad public of Patras & Western Greece.

10 May 2012 - FP7 INFO DAY at UPAT

Mrs Christina Pascual and Georgia Tzenou (National Documentation Center & National Contact Point, NHRF, Athens, Hellas), presented new EU FP7 funding opportunities through the open or the forthcoming calls in HEALTH, IDEAS (for health Sciences), Marie Curie actions. The event was organized in the framework of the 1st SEE-DRUG Workshop, held at 9-10 of May at Conference and Cultural Center of University of Patras.
The pdf files of Mrs C. Pacual & G. Tzenou can be found HERE

July 2014: An event focused on the use of a new patented technology to study the interaction of small or large molecules with pharmaceutical interest, was organized as an Academic Demo/Info-day at 24^th of July 2014 (11.00-19.00)at the laboratories of the UPAT’s Department of Pharmacy, by Dr. Francois-Xavier Ogi (NanoTemper Technologies GmbH, Germany).

More than 20 persons attended this event. Costs were covered by company and by UPAT’s funding sources.

January 2015: An info day, with a representative from an international industry was organized at January 24^th, 2015, at the Conference & Cultural Center of University of Patras. A course of scientific lectures, focused on the recent advances in the field of target identification and modern drug discovery process, was provided by Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis :

Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Taros Chemicals GmbH & Co. KG, Dortmund, Germany, presented the current state of the European Lead Factory, a pan-European online platform, and its contribution to drug discovery in Europe. A brief summary of his lecture is provided below:

EUROPEAN LEAD FACTORY – GAME CHANGING FOR INNOVATIVE MEDICINE

Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis, Taros Chemicals GmbH & Co. KG, Dortmund, Germany

The so-called ‘patent cliff’ has been a much discussed and feared event in the pharmaceutical industry. Numerous blockbuster drugs are coming out of patent in the US and European markets in 2013, and even more by 2015. European pharmaceutical companies alone stand to lose a multi-billion Euro figures if no new products will fill the shrinking drug pipeline. In order to sustain Europe’s position in the global health care business new approaches in the pharmaceutical R&D process are being discussed such as Crowd Sourcing and Open Innovation.

The European Lead Factory is a pan-European platform for drug discovery, organized in an Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) supported public private partnership (PPP), set to address this issue and to give a major boost to drug discovery in Europe. Comprising a collection of half a million compounds and a screening center, the European Lead Factory will offer researchers in academia, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and patient organizations an unprecedented opportunity to advance medical research and develop new drug candidates. The European Lead Factory is a novel platform for innovative drug discovery driven by an international consortium of 30 partners and funded with € 195 Mio. This partnership is the first of its kind and creates unprecedented opportunities for the discovery of new medicines. Academics and SMEs now have access, at no cost to them, to an ‘industry-like’ discovery platform in order to be able to translate cutting-edge academic research into high-quality drug candidates on a scale and speed that was previously not available to them. This is made possible in part through the access to an exceptional collection of small molecules. 300.000 chemical compounds have been contributed by seven pharmaceutical companies from their corporate chemical collections; an estimated additional 200.000 novel compounds are being jointly developed by academia and SMEs using the integrated knowledge of all consortium partners and through an open innovation and crowd sourcing approach. Taros Chemicals a leader in medicinal chemistry services is coordinating the production of the public compound collection. Researchers form the entire academic community with innovative biology targets as well as chemistry scaffolds are welcome to participate in the EU Lead Factory.

An important part of the European Lead Factory is the European Screening Centre, which assists public contributors of novel targets in the development of assays amenable to the requirements of industrialized screening methodology at no charge to the submitters. The ELF is running a state of the art facility for compound logistics and high throughput screening to handle the 500.000-strong compound collection and provides submitting target owners with Improved Qualified Hit List with relevant screening information with suggestions for progression.

More than 100 persons attended this event. Total cost of the event (conference room lodging & coffees/light meals for the participant):